Date of Award

Spring 1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

English

Abstract

Kate Chopin? Who is she? This is a common resonse of many people who are not familiar with this outstanding woman writer of the late 1800's and early 1900's. In fact, this same question would more likely have gone unanswered then than today. For the most part, many of her contemporaries are prominently discussed and read today because they enjoyed popularity while they were alive. They not only established literary voges; in many cases they gave the public what it wanted to read. Such writers include Mark Twain and Stephen Crane as well as Edith Wharton and Ellen Glasgow. Kate Chopin,on the other hand, did not receive wide-spread publicity during her lifetime. Some of the works she produced were accepted graciously into various magazines in the 1800's. Others, however, were rejected, not because they were inferior but because they were believed to be too candid or too risque. These particular works, of which some will be discussed later in depth, would not even be given a second glance today as far as their suggestive aspects are concerned. As the years pass, attitudes change.

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